i wonder if everyone knows sometimes. i feel as if though in hiding so much ive invariably forgotten something, because my mind is stuck in a loop,
in self hatred so self encompassing it wraps even my own ability to convince myself im delivering a convincing performance. nothing pleases it, it blinks at me every second in blue and red and gray, i stray further away from the end, and i wonder—
sitting down and writing out how i feel has taken up a lot of my time over the years. if someone were to ever pore through the sporadic memos and notes littered all about my devices and my walls, they'd see an incessant need to verbalize it all— like it's not real unless there's tangible proof of it. i can't help it. i've always wanted to write. it's all i want to do. out of every change, the legion of them, the one thing that's stayed constant is my need to write it down. lately though, i've been doing more reading than writing, more talking than staying quiet. spending more time awake than asleep. surrounded by family and friends, laughing until our sides hurt. yet, there are long days alone where i can do nothing but sit down and write out how i feel. everything's gone topsy-turvy, my heart in the ground and my feet skipping through the cloud i'm on. i'm completely divorced from context, from myself too.
it's a curious thing playing joint custody with myself. i herd the child in me to a safer, softer place on the weekdays. i let the adult in me out to do his play and work while she sleeps. lately, she's been asleep more often than not, and i hesitate to wake her up. i see less and feel less of the twenty-odd years behind me, while the image of the twenty-odd years ahead of me comes into sharper focus for the first time. yet as much time as i spend writing down how i feel, i spend as much, if not more, time floundering around, trying to whet the dull contours of that image into something comprehensible. floundering around while the words make their slow journey through my brainstem down to my tongue onto its tip, until i figure out what it is. it takes me time, such an immense amount of time, to parse through all the sense memories i have that i'm often only recognizing tastes and sounds and smells and patterns a while after it's passed, and the image blurs itself again. but there's always a new thing in its place. new words to choke on, new tastes coating my mouth, new patterns registering. its less of a vicious cycle more than it is constant metamorphosis. i'm shedding chrysalises and missing each of them. every shell, every home. every broken thing, mended and shelved and discarded again.
my mother had a terracotta vase nearly 15 years ago. it was a tall, slender thing with painted white flowers swirling around its column. the rim jutted out just slightly, with a frosty mosaic that cupped the flowers my mother liked to display in them. some evenings, she’d balance a tealight on top and the terracotta glowed in the flickers of the wick. i’d wile away my evenings watching the shoots and swaying of light, how the flowers would come to life and snake around the vase, sunwarm and polished. my mother was dearly fond of it, keeping it far out of reach of my toddler hands and clumsy hips. she’d ensure that the glass plate it was on was wiped clean, the vase itself dusted, that there was always fresh hibiscus plucked from the garden perched atop the mosaic rim. it was a beautiful thing. and she loved it.
one afternoon, i hear a shatter and faint yelling. i rush into the living room to see shards of terracotta over the coffee table and floor. before my mother tells me to be careful and avoid the sharp bits, i notice the look on her face, red-rimmed and blanched. i had never seen that expression before; it took me a decade to recognize what it was, the rotten curdling on your tongue. this is what it looks like to break something you love.
a few days later, i see the vase has been reconstructed and now relegated to the lounge. it was not the centerpiece anymore, on account of the contrails of white glue streaking throughout its tall column. some shards were chipped, bits of petals and stems missing, but it was meticulously put back together despite its violent death. i asked my mom what happened and she shrugged, said it didn’t matter because my dad managed to fix it. but it just wasn’t the same. the bunches of flowers dwindled, dust coated the rich terracotta and over the long years since— i don’t remember the last time i saw that vase.
it might’ve been kinder, allowing its death to happen the first time. but somehow, it felt easier to taxidermy the poor thing and play pretend with its corpse. there have been a lot of things throughout my life that i’ve tried to resurrect out of spite and grief and anger, and they’d always come back a mangled, wretched imitation of the original thing, like those funnily taxidermied lions at the natural history museum. but that had been enough, at least i had the ghost of it. at least, there wasn’t nothingness. maybe i got it from my mother, who pretended for twenty long years that terracotta vase was as precious as it once was. or my father, who glued all the broken pieces together without a question. but that could just be love, insisting. knocking on your door after you’ve ignored their bells a few times already. what a stupid extended metaphor. its not even a metaphor. i have to say it literally. at least there was always love, and now there isn’t anymore.
there’s something about finality and cords cutting and all your limbs going marionette-limp that forces a little bit of nothingness. there’s nothing everywhere. its all nothing. and i keep trying to fill in some of the nothingness that’s creeped into my head. a large pencil sketch of the algernon coote at westminster abbey that i worked on for a month, unnecessarily big and detailed just to fill the space. a long writing project that ate up another month, awful and cloying in everything. but in all of it, i keep trying to bring back what i had once. love in the gift to my parents, love to the person in me who wanted to write a cheesy fanfic because he had always wanted to. but still, mangled, wretched. just an imitation and it doesn’t feel enough anymore. another extended metaphor. perhaps i can’t say things literally.
its something i’ve been working on with my therapist, the fact that i can never say things straightforward. how i go around in circles. and it feels eerie and wrong to say that, especially here, in a place that holds all of me throughout eight years. eight years through which i’ve resurrected multiple things and its all recorded here, the originals and their imitations unerring in its oscillating for close to a decade. eight years through which i’ve never been able to talk about anything too literally, or too honestly. to be more honest about it. eight years through which i’ve denied going to therapy year after year because it felt too literal to me. too honest. you’re mentally ill. you go to therapy. literally?
i couldn’t bear that. i couldn’t bear how honest i would have to be to make it financially worth the cost to my parents and emotionally worth the cost to myself. but it was finally time, i just regret it took so much pain to be able to stop ignoring it. now, i just may have to live with this permanently, because i refused to seek any real help for the pain, until it got too sharp and ugly and Permanent to ignore. so much so that the only thing i could think of to convey the severity of it is breaking the eight year long oath of never using capital letters on this website. and yet, another extended metaphor. a metaphor that's been building since 2018, i suppose. it doesn’t stop. but see, i’m working on it. i’m going to therapy. i’m on medication. i did two good things for myself. perhaps the pain won’t ever go away, both the literal one in my ankle and the illiterate one in my head (my therapist says its my heart), but there’s ways to alleviate it that doesn’t include clawing my way out of my own brain.
one session, she asked me to just sit with it. myself. my body. to let myself listen, as cheesy as that sounds. and i told her, 'well, i swim every morning. i kind of don’t do anything but listen to my body for an hour'— a beautiful hour i afforded myself every morning at 6:00am, where i saw the sun break over the clouds, felt rain prick like tiny needles on a backstroke, had long conversations during with my dad about stupid things, the ideal sandwich on a long drive, what chartered accountants do, about serious things, things i cannot talk about literally still, so i end this insert— but my therapist insisted, she said, 'you see things in the clouds and spend all thirty laps still thinking, you told me yourself in our first session. try to not think for a few seconds.'
try to let the brain stop and the body take over. it felt so literal. i closed my eyes and saw the little phosephenes behind my eyelids dance into words and images i keep thinking about. hoping if i manage to think all my feelings out into simple words and sentences, a steady formula in the english language, subject predicate, that i could squash it all down into these simple containers. these words. but, she noticed that i was doing that somehow. asked me to consciously listen to my body, not interpret it before you’ve even heard what it’s got to say. sort of like progressive muscle relaxation in the pool. a steady, simple process. binary action. contract, then relax. listen, then interpret. don’t go in circles.
i’ve always gone in circles. to put it romantically, like the planets around the sun. cyclical movements, jolting through an axis heading straight to a destination i can only see the faint contours of. to put it literally, a downward spiral. yet, heading straight through it all. i’ve lived through it all. i continue to live through it all. i packed it all into words, digestible packets for everyone to consume, easy to swallow pills in stupid word after word after word. i heal, i relapse. contract, then relax. in circles. but that’s not enough really. it’s still more nothings. depression has its way of convincing you it’s an untranslatable language, known only to you and will never be known, truly understood, to the people around you. it convinces you if you simply try hard enough, pack all of its complexities and nuance into other codes, as all translations do, then somehow it would be enough. if you could communicate through the mangled, wretched imitations of what is really happening in your brain, you could get by. like moving to a new country and communicating in vague sounds and signals to its residents for the first few years. like a terracotta vase with white glue at the seams, trying to emulate what it once was. i can’t squash the experience of living like this into words. and i learnt that in that rainy afternoon in august, in my therapist’s office, with my hand on my heart listening to my body for the first time.
it was also the heady rush of being listened to for the first time, truly listened to, in a while. not the imitation of being listened to. but the real deal, the original. all empathy and pushbacks where there needed to be, smiles when you needed them, harsh reality when it was warranted. i can’t put that feeling into words. ‘being listened to’ feels too shallow for what it was. but i recognize she’s just incredible at her job. that’s what they train to do over those long years of education and practice. i could see the intelligence behind every nod. every affirmation. every question. the effort that goes into it, of listening, then interpreting. i watched my roommate study it for two years, all the impressive, impossible things she did studying psychology, the most intelligent person i’ve ever met. i could see that intelligence sitting across from me in that desk chair. the ability to be empathetic when its right, sympathetic when its right.
i have a stray memory of explaining to someone the difference between sympathy and empathy early this year, sort of just quoting the dictionary definition, squashing all of it down into vague sounds, digestible packets. not an important distinction, not worth thinking about. this year has had it’s fun teaching me lessons until i keenly felt the difference between them, until i spent all my time picking at that little distinction. how awfully i needed vitamin d, some ibuprofen, some empathy. the original things. not mismatched quilts of actions and words.
yet, another extended metaphor.
at the start of this, i said i've spent more time reading than writing lately. ipso facto, i've spent more time in my head than i ever have. i've come to know the ridges and valleys of my gray matter better than i ever have, all corrugated rust. yet again, its less of a downward spiral more than it is a constant metamorphosis; i'm more of myself now, lesser of who i've ever been. i'm getting a masters degree in a field i've only grazed academically before, which has turned out to be more challenging (more rewarding) than i figured it'd be. partly the reason i've spent more time reading than writing, partly the reason i've had to play joint custody with myself, just to keep the peace while i get work done. i'm walking faster than i've managed to since i fractured my ankle last year, perhaps even faster than i've managed ever. i don't count each grain of sand plummeting down the neck of the hourglass, sometimes i don't acknowledge it at all. sometimes, i feel it all piling on top of me, every stray brick the universe has thrown at me for fun this year, but i stay steady, balanced, with my hand on my heart, listening.
there are very few people in the world who understand what it's like to have your heart sink the day the clocks go forward. who keenly empathize with the ache that comes with knowing the sun now sets after eight pm. somewhere in the fog of the last two weeks, i lost sight of the fact that i will have lost an hour of sleep last night. it'd, once again, be that time of the year i procrastinate changing the time on my analogue clock for a few days. until i scrounge up enough vitality to fiddle with the gears for five minutes. summer has never been a very kind season to me and i've learnt to dread it on instinct. all of the mid-year catastrophes over the last decade of my life have ganged up to instill evolutionary fear into me. it strikes right into my heart and the wound doesn't close up until the temperatures reach an average of single digits again and i can safely keep my sunglasses away in the depths of my wardrobe. i'm not sure if an opposite of seasonal affective disorder exists, but maybe its time to look into that.
i have never handled the heat very well, maybe something about getting too much of it as a kid. it makes me nauseous and all types of achey. the annual advent of march means my electric fan gets promoted to a full-time employee for the next few months, and its droning buzz becomes my permanent ambience. i have no natural inclination towards warmth at all; i spend all of summer trying to flee it the best i can. i'm not shy about my distaste for the heat, and it's gotten me some curious questions over the last few years. i just say it's always made me feel sick, and i don't really get into it. i haven't reconciled the difference between the popular honeyed image of summer to what i feel for it. the other day, i was on my way to university on a day where the highs were projected to be around 20°c. the sun was out, no clouds covering her modesty, and the streets were choked with people. terraces and patios gurgled with conversation and clinking cocktail glasses, and all the waterfront cafes had lines curving the corners. i hadn't seen summer in the netherlands since 2023 and it took me for a momentary spin- the sudden reminder that the sun is something cherished here, that the sticky heat beneath everyone's collars was welcome.
but back when i didn't live here, during my childhood days where i had perpetual access to air conditioning, i never thought about it too much— despite growing up in a country where the asphalt on highways melted every year in june heat. the government introduced rolling blackouts during the hottest months of the year to cope with the summer electricity demand to keep the air conditioners running. we kept our curtains half-drawn during the afternoons and made sure the thermostat was set to 18°c. popsicles were always abundant in the freezer and my dad would pick up three cups of sweet watermelon juice for us on his way back home from work on fridays. i remained insulated. protected. but i was thrust into the sizzling pan of the world a few years ago, and it's now my favorite thing to bring up to people when the topic of summer comes up. i ask if they've ever felt the scorch of 56°c on their skin. if they know what it's like for the sun to burn you up inside-out, like eggs cracked over blistering pavement when you need to venture outside in july. i tell people about the northwesterly winds that brought in sand, blanketing the city in a thick coat of dust. all my friends and i would fly out of the country for a few months every summer, to meet family, to grieve family, to escape the walls of orange sand that would press everyone into their houses for days on end.
regardless, summer became the season of running away from something. it has stayed that way for fourteen years now. in a roundabout way, i'm so practiced at running away from this advancing heat that i forgot it was coming at all. until i woke up today and noticed the one hour discrepancy between my phone and the ticking clock that rests on my desk. it's the first quantifiable reminder, unquestionable against the ambiguity of rising sleeves and sprouting trees. but this time around, i want to face this feeling instead, let the sweat sit on my skin and savor the salt, the heat. there's a lot of sweet, little things i have come to appreciate about this time of the year. i spend most of my time after march with my eyes scrunched shut, hand blocking the sun. but when i find shelter under store awnings and in tram carriages, i'm happy i'm still here to see all of it, to witness another cycle of the sun beating down on me to air out the dampness of winter.
my previous apartment used to get the most beautiful sunlight all year round. i was in love with it, with the way slices of sun would jut across the floor every evening, painting walls in sweet oranges. summer meant tangerine-peel shadows scattered across the living room, soupy heat that made my roommate and i delirious. if there was any relief in the hellish summer of 2023, i found it in the funny way the sun would cut through the blinds in my room in the evenings. i found affection in the way the light would follow me through the day around the house. the soft-boiled yolk of early morning sun dripping onto my pillow. the shimmery noons warming up the wood of my desk. evenings washing my friends' faces pink. i was in love with it. i've had the privilege of having abundantly sunlit residences all my life, but it was in that apartment i learnt how instrumental the sun was to my functioning. during the aforementioned hellish summer of 2023, its cosseting warmth was the only comfort i had in may. the month when colors seemed so desaturated. the month navel oranges go out of season. i spent the entire time steeped in ennui, lackadaisical until the ribbons of sunlight propped me up into place.
it all used to remind me a lot of the sunlight in my childhood home. i found comfort in that spurious association. since summers were so brutal back home, with lesser chance to filter out into parks and beaches, i spent a lot of time looking at the four walls of my room throughout the first twenty years of my life. bright and sun-drenched. i had practically memorized the pattern of the sunlight there. sixteen gold grids by ten cutting into the wall behind my bed, a byproduct of the squared windowpanes i had. there was an attached balcony, thronged with my mothers' prized plants and trees: lemon trees that bowed over the balustrade under the weight of its own fruit, bougainvilleas, hibiscuses, basil, chilis, perched upon the windowsill that cast swaying shadows at evening. it was patent proof of my mother's green thumb and her own sunny disposition, singularly capable of raising a haven for sparrows and pigeons in that swelter. it was all i photographed the few weeks before we had to move out, reels and reels capturing every detail of that summer sun i was convinced i hated.
having lived alone for a few months now, i've come to think of the little bit of sunlight that leaks into my place as my new roommate. not much of a change from my older one, just as warm yet enigmatic. i can trust in its unfettering presence, which has been comforting especially lately when there is little to trust in. but i've always felt like summer has this tendency to shine light on the dusty, cobwebbed parts of me that don't often get aired out otherwise. months worth of neglect sits over them, and i'm confronted with it all without fail when the clocks go forward again. i can't conceal them with big coats and winter jackets anymore. usually, i flounder and struggle through the exposure. the heat blinds me to any sort of sense.
but for the first time, i changed the time on my clock on the first day of daylight savings. maybe, it's a good augury. maybe, its that burst of motivation at the start of spring-cleaning season. but i've taken out the brooms and dustpans. all the dust is going to be swept away this time, and all the windows are going to be wiped, to let the sunlight in a bit better.
my mother is sleeping in a hospital bed tonight. i am 8000 kilometers away but i inflated my air mattress, took a scratchy pillow and blanket, and made my bed in a cold corner of my room. some sort of symbolic act that will not mean anything to anyone but me. i won't sleep in my own bed when my mother isn't sleeping in hers.
i also needed a little change. i was close to breaking tonight, losing progress on something i've worked extremely hard on for 2 years, but i thought about my mother in her hospital bed and my father alone in his, and thought it would be only fitting if i felt equally empty. so i'm holding onto this ache, i'm letting myself burn up inside instead of burying it all under physical, digestible pain. this is all there is at the end of the day. i see it now. this is all that is really there for me.
i cannot believe sometimes, just how much of my life is ruled around conversations of illness, of medicine. of doctors, of relatives who are doctors, of relatives who can refer you to doctors, of this mysterious lymph node infection or this sinking suspicion that what is about to set in is an usher-in for the worst depressive episode of my life, of illegally refilled prescriptions, of "hey, i think i need to get an eye test", of pain. of pain, always of pain.
i'm not entirely sure when i started noticing it. perhaps three years ago, when my parents and i fell dramatically, weepingly ill a few weeks after moving countries. first me, then my dad and finally, my mother. the pattern again, followed a few months later after a short domestic flight. a sudden, ravaging cold that took me hostage first, then briefly my dad, before spitting the both of us out and taking my mother. which ate away at her until there was very little, until there was the sudden need to go to new sorts of doctors and get new sorts of tests and new sorts of scans. new sorts of conversations to be had. this delicate tone that started lacing between all of our words. phrases blunted and jokes slightly more offbeat. it dripped between our conversations quick, until it has become all we really have now.
i can't remember the last time i spoke to someone without some sort of illness becoming the main topic of conversation for a good amount of time. but i've been the perpetrator most of the time as well. a year ago, i fractured my ankle so severely that it still hurts to various degrees every second i'm conscious. it's a different beast each day. some days, it's a mewling kitten who can be put to sleep with a little warmth. other days, it's the wingbeat of a hummingbird. pulsing and persistent. a few times, it's skittish like a deer. if i look for it i can spot it, but i wander carelessly otherwise. but it is always there, and i like to think a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. so i let it slip sometimes, through reticent confessions. "hey, can we slow down a bit? the ankle, yknow." "sorry if i take a little longer today, i think i rested my ankle weirdly while i slept." all this posturing and professing to mold this pain into something digestible. but it comes at the cost of having to mention it, thus falling into the trapdoor of being the perpetrator.
i love it, in a lot of ways. the fact that you need to trust the other person in some degree at the least to be able to divulge medical details to. so the people in my immediate circle trust me, here is irrefutable proof i can hold to glean some warmth from. nobody warns you about that- how being in pain all the time leaves you cold and stiff, so you leech all the warmth you can from people now. and once again, that trapdoor.
but i yearn for when i could spend days on end unaware of the existence of hospitals. of when the next appointment is scheduled. of knowing which pills are taken at morning and at night. when all that mattered to me was what book my dad was reading every evening in his white armchair, and what new songs i would download on my pink ipod nano. we had our fevers and we had our ills, we had our mournful long-distance calls, and my psychiatrist's number favorited. i am aware that the sicknesses of back then were not gauzy. they were always just as bad as they seem now. perhaps, i had a less developed sense of the perennial flow of time. maybe, i was more practiced at looking past the wretchedness of it. but whatever it was, i don't have that safeguard anymore. this change feels permanent, to the point where calling it a change is overdue, it is just routine.
last year, on my second day of having a freshly fractured ankle, i found it impossibly hard to use crutches to hop any distance longer than 10 meters. through various funny events, i acquired a wheelchair that afternoon. it took some time but i adjusted to it after a bit. sooner rather than later, it almost seemed like it belonged there. there was irrefutable proof of my pain that i gazed at every second, that there was more than one thing broken here now. but maybe that is when i truly did start noticing it. conversations had become only morose affairs keeping each other up on each of our respective hurts and sicks. everything centers around what is wrong with me. around the people around me. i package it all up in the end with a neat little bow and tuck it away for next time. meanwhile, i try to notice when each sentence out of my mouth isn't rooted in desperate conviction. we'll be okay. of course, it'll work. you look well today! it's okay, it's absolutely okay.
i often play around the idea with what would constitute as solid enough penance in the eyes of god in this time and age to grant me with a wish. the whiplash of horror of getting your phone stolen? the avalanche of tax season fluffing up your mailbox? the deluge of spit and insult and pain? if i manage to leech all the pain out for the people around me, would that end it all? would that help the pill go down smoother?
as much as i said earlier that i don't try as hard anymore, i tried today. i tried so incredibly hard today— i followed the instinctual guide on how to feel better to a tee today. i did nearly everything right, and yet. and yet. it takes one quiet moment for it to sneak up on you, perhaps. it doesn't matter how many endorphin-boosting activities you packed into one day, miasma comes through the tiniest perforations regardless.
once again, i have to remember there's no quick fix to a chemical problem, even if i'm halfway convinced it really isn't chemical at all and it never has been. i have to remember trying your best guarantees nothing at the end of the day. you will still cry, and you will still despair and the only thing you really can do is choose to give it another shot tomorrow. hope that things shall be different again.
i have to convince myself my life is not ending in a few months. i have to consciously remind myself that the end of one phase of my life does not mean the end of it entirely, as much as it feels that way sometimes (all the time). it's a little funny how this site has been there through my transition to a different school, to a different country, to university, now i'm steadily hurtling towards the end of my degree and nothing has changed.
nothing has changed in the very small ways. i still sleep on my right side. i still struggle making a good cup of coffee. i still plaster my walls in color. i still look at the thirty-squared grid in the calendar at the start of every month and mourn a little. for the hours i will inevitably waste, for the evenings i could've been doing something better, for the days i will spend thinking about every month already lived, unerasable. anticipatory grief for anticipatory nostalgia.
a lot has changed in big ways. i've been taking apart and reassembling all the tightly packed lego bricks that make up my life recently and i've found it easier to just precariously balance them on top of each other instead. it's less work for later, no vain seconds spent hurting your fingertips. i deactivated most of my social media recently and i'm learning to like the loneliness that comes with it. i'm in a completely different place with completely different priorities. i cut down on my daily makeup routine. i lost a few friends. i gained new ones. i don't try nearly as hard anymore; i'm not trying to make everything i put out into the world a newer, better product. i don't spend significant stretches of time debating which word fits better in a sentence. if sentence or phrase is the word i'm looking for. if i should be using commas instead of full stops right now. sometimes, it's alright to be lackluster. it's alright to not be intelligent. i'm also aware i'm walking a delicate tightrope—lack of effort is quicksand. you forget the sweep of clouds and dazzle of the sun if you don't look up occasionally.
i just don't want to think so hard anymore. even if just for a little bit. but as things are, i now nurse the wounded bird that used to flutter in my chest, the weight of it tremendous and exhausting. but i cannot stop just yet. just a little more, then a little more, then a little more.
after my diagnosis a decade ago, i have spent significant chunks of my time thinking about what it truly is like navigating life with depression. a creaky rocking chair is what i've come up with. back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with creaks ringing out the way backwards. there are ways to get off the chair but it feels easier to just kick it away under you.
after a fair run of a year and a half since my last serious depressive episode, i can feel the telltale swing backwards again, just a slight tilt for now, the beginning seconds of a long, drawn out creak. it's terrifying and i keep digging my heels furiously into the flooring beneath me to keep myself level. it feels a little bit different now, when i give myself time to stop and think about it. i'm not as unsteady as before, or so i'd like to think. the last one year has buttressed the slats behind my back with soft pillowy cushions, contentment and comfort briefly making me forget the tension in my calves at all times, trying to not rock backwards.
i keep vowing to myself to never speak about this again, to never write about it, to never breathe a word of this to anyone- resolute, gasping promises in the middle of cold nights and more sorry proclamations in my head when i'm outside and the chair i'm on tips a fraction of an inch further down when i'm distracted. but i know that really can't be the truth- it's the kind of promise i have to break. it's all i think about sometimes, it's all i want to say sometimes, to forge a witness in the fire i am about to burn in. create empirical proof for the sin of being sad and fold it away in a letter for someone else to find later. or more kindly, to reach out for help, maybe ask someone to hold my hand as i try to force myself out of my seat. it's hard, though. my hands may be too clammy for someone to hold comfortably and it's a pitiful sight.
i had been really happy lately. more so, for a long while. so happy that it stuck between my teeth like sticky toffee pudding and scored my windpipe with laughter. so happy that perhaps for the first time in my life, it's propelling me to write about it. but i guess my primary motivator is still sadness, because here i am months after it's all over, bleeding heart and missing it all so deeply; thinking about it so much that i'm not listening to the creaks, all i see are snapshots where i'm smiling and my feet are relaxed. and i want to write about it, paint it down with the hazy half-remembered colors in my palette before they completely fade away. but every time i try to, i realize i can't. im so entirely wrapped in my inability to think about happiness and loss that i have no real words for it. no real drive to uncomplicate my relationship with my own sense of joy. sometimes, i imagine that in some recessed part of me, i enjoy being this way and it is completely a choice of mine to continue to rock back and forth. other times, i try my best to scrabble forward and i realize no sane person would choose this if they had the chance; i want to be happy again, i want to stand up and walk towards that light at the end of the tunnel people keep telling me about.
i think i’d like to do quiet things someday. pack gift boxes full of snowglobes and postcards and the other kinds of things that remind me of people. run around a little, then stop with my hands on my knees, hunched over panting. when i clock out at the end of the day, and make the trip down the city to the hole in the wall i’ve made home, will i wave to people? will people wave to me?
when i get older, if i get older, will i have the courage to step into a public swimming pool? no one’s eyes will be on me as i make the careful steps down the blue stairs, and my swimming cap fits right without digging into my forehead or nape.
maybe i’d schedule my day around eating a pomegranate sometimes. i don’t like pomegranates but i don’t like who i am either, that’s the way things are. with juice stained hands, i’d grab onto a stray towel on the bathroom rack and leave it there. when i find it later, eyes bleary, i’d laugh a little. the remnants of the pomegranate incident marked on this out-of-place white towel.
i can’t wax poetic about life, i’ve never enjoyed it- the supposed sacred art of taking a breath and expelling it through a sniffly nose, or the tickle of baby hairs against my forehead as i sink into the pillow after a hard day- all it does is leave me thinking, these little sensations don’t matter, no one’s looking at me,
the next day, i’d find the white towel again. this time it hangs a little more stiffly, and i can see the marks of my pomegranate hands darkened into an ugly purple. i ball it up and aim for the hamper, does it go in or not?
i don’t check. i never check.
the new year’s first morning’s fresh air is crisp and cold, blue, flat skies and slightly hard to breathe. my nose is runny from sniffling the whole way last night, sleeplessness, restlessness, something itching at my eyes and a deep, deep ache in my heart. i wonder what that ache is, i wonder the whole night through, i wonder if i’ll find the answer in between the pauses of my parents’ snoring— something i used to bet on a decade and a half ago through the walls of my bedroom and now right next to me, squeezed together on the double bed in my small studio in somewhere, the netherlands. I wonder if i’ll find the answer in the first clouds of the new years but i draw the curtains to first- meet a concrete monster of a building and then, meet empty wispless blue. i wonder if i’ll find it in the bubbles in the froth of my coffee but we’ve run out of milk apparently and cannot repurchase any because we’re all flying out of the country in a few hours so hey, i think we all need to have black tea today. no bubbles there. i wonder what it is. i wonder if it’s about not finding answers in other things anymore, if it’s about having to make my own answer finally. something cliche like that.
